1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and to a device for the transport and simultaneous cutting of flexible, two-dimensional products, in particular of printed products such as newspapers, magazines or parts thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Printed products during their manufacture run through various working stations, wherein the transport of the printed products within the working stations is configured differently, according to the different requirements. Thus the transport may be effected within one working station, e.g. in an insert drum with pockets or in a revolving pocket transport system, but also in a collector drum or in a collector transport system with saddles. The printed products as a rule are conveyed from one working station to the next working station by way of conveyor devices. Hereby, they are typically held individually by individual grippers, mostly at the open end or the fold, and transported in a hanging manner. For cutting the edges too, the printed products today must be transferred into special transport units according to the applied cutting methods, such as into a pocket transport system, for example as this is described in CH 668216, or in rotating cell wheels, as this is described e.g. in CH 685153 or in EP0367715. The transfer of the printed products from the grippers of the X conveyor device to the transport unit of the working station and back again to a conveyor device demands a certain coordination effort with the incoming transport as well as outgoing transport of the printed products.
A method and a device are described in EP 0762950, with which this coordination effort is to be reduced in that the grippers remain allocated to the printed products during the cutting process, so that the printed products are led to the cutting station and again led away from this in each case by the same grippers. The printed products are transferred to clamping clips for the cutting process itself. The grippers are opened for aligning the printed products, and the printed products are firstly displaceably deposited in the clamping clips perpendicular to the conveying direction. After alignment, the printed products are clamped in the clamping clips and are stabilized by these for cutting.
A method and a device are also described in DE 10052010, with which the coordination effort is low, since no transfer to a separate transport unit is effected for the cutting. The printed products in transport pockets are led up to a cutting station, remain in their pockets during the cutting, and are also transported away again from the cutting station in the pockets. With this, the products are transported in the pockets in a standing manner, wherein the pocket walls laterally stabilize the products over a large surface and support them against gravity.
Since very many transport means such as grippers or pockets are required for the transport of the products, the design of the transport means is a cost factor which may not be neglected. Hereby, the complexity of the mechanics play just an important role as the material costs. However, the number of required transport means should also be kept as low as possible. Both solutions for transport and cutting two-dimensional, flexible products known from the state of the art do not provide any satisfactory solution here.